The book dialog game

[issybird]

Here's a nice quote from the book that should appeal:

From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood.

[poohbear_nc]

I love that quote ... but I don't think I've read it ....

[WT Sharpe]

I'm pretty sure I have, but can't remember where. I don't believe I've read the book from which it was taken, but I do seem to remember it as a quote.

[HomeInMyShoes]

It sounds familiar, but then I've got no clue as to a book.

"One's never alone with a rubber duck."

[issybird]

I think for those who have read the book, the Christmas tree scene gives it away. But here's a few more choice quotes and if no one has a lightbulb moment, Hamlet can take it.

'This could be a whole life,' she thought. 'You work eight hours a day covering wires to earn money to buy food and to pay for a place to sleep that you can keep living to come back to cover more wires. Some people are born and kept living just to come to this.'

And:

Growing up spoiled a lot of things.

And:

[She] wished adults would stop telling her that. Already the load of thanks in the future was weighing her down. She figured she'd have to spend the best years of her womanhood hunting up people to tell them that they were right and to thank them.

And:

Spoiler:

Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard. She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. She was Katie's secret, despairing weeping. She was the shame of her father staggering home drunk.

Spoiler:

That and it features probably the worst and most indifferent public librarian ever.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

Spoiler:

That and it features probably the worst and most indifferent public librarian ever.

That is a classic scene. Poor [...] reading the same two books week after week.

[issybird]

Not a nibble, not a smidge of a guess. It's up to Hamlet.

Originally Posted by issybird

Not a nibble, not a smidge of a guess. It's up to Hamlet.

So the book is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. So with that I am it again, eh? Sorry I am drawing a blank for another book with any sort of Christmas reference. It's still the fall season though so here is this:

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy ___________.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

So the book is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. So with that I am it again, eh? Sorry I am drawing a blank for another book with any sort of Christmas reference. It's still the fall season though so here is this:

Well I know that melancholy ________. I've been waiting for someone else to jump in.

So another hint for others:

I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus probably be the last I should obtain--that the lady, at least while living, would be seen by me no more.

[issybird]

I think the style reveals the author, so it's just a matter of picking the right title.

[WT Sharpe]

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy?

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy?

No not Tolstoy. An American author. Here's another:

I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down--but with a shudder even more thrilling than before--upon the remodelled and inverted images of the grey sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.

[poohbear_nc]

The Fall of the House of Usher - EA Poe!

[I think only Poe & Lovecraft regularly used the phrase "lurid tarn"]